The Bizarre Music and Sound Design of Wario Land 4
The Bizarre Music and Sound Design of Wario Land 4
by _geno7_
1 Comment
TheVibratingPants
Wario Land 4 has to be one of the most stylish and weirdly artsy games I’ve played. It’s both beautiful and absolutely bizarre, and the sound aesthetic is a huge part of it.
This is seriously a fantastic video and helped articulate a lot of things that I’ve felt about Wario Land 4, as well as confirm some feelings I could never properly support with evidence. WL4 feels alive and organic and stylish as hell. It (and early Wario Ware titles) are the epitome of Nintendo’s punk rock creativity.
The way Land 4 modulates sounds, music, and voices is fucking intense and pays off beautifully in creating this perfectly eclectic hodgepodge of interesting ideas that make it more than the sum of its parts.
As the video mentions, it may have been the result of having a relatively small staff on board. There was only one crew member that had any sound or music related credits (Ryoji Yoshitomi) and it’s likely that he was also well-versed in programming. With teams being so large and individual roles being so specialized, it’d be really difficult to see this kind of singular artistic endeavor again.
Even if we did get Wario Land 5, I just don’t think we’d have the same lightning in a bottle event that 4 was; an unrepeatable crossroad of talent, creativity, resources, and vision – Vision being the key thing that I think so many things lack now. Maybe that’s probably just me being cynical, but I don’t think we’ll ever see another game like Wario Land 4.
1 Comment
Wario Land 4 has to be one of the most stylish and weirdly artsy games I’ve played. It’s both beautiful and absolutely bizarre, and the sound aesthetic is a huge part of it.
This is seriously a fantastic video and helped articulate a lot of things that I’ve felt about Wario Land 4, as well as confirm some feelings I could never properly support with evidence. WL4 feels alive and organic and stylish as hell. It (and early Wario Ware titles) are the epitome of Nintendo’s punk rock creativity.
The way Land 4 modulates sounds, music, and voices is fucking intense and pays off beautifully in creating this perfectly eclectic hodgepodge of interesting ideas that make it more than the sum of its parts.
As the video mentions, it may have been the result of having a relatively small staff on board. There was only one crew member that had any sound or music related credits (Ryoji Yoshitomi) and it’s likely that he was also well-versed in programming. With teams being so large and individual roles being so specialized, it’d be really difficult to see this kind of singular artistic endeavor again.
Even if we did get Wario Land 5, I just don’t think we’d have the same lightning in a bottle event that 4 was; an unrepeatable crossroad of talent, creativity, resources, and vision – Vision being the key thing that I think so many things lack now. Maybe that’s probably just me being cynical, but I don’t think we’ll ever see another game like Wario Land 4.